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The Audacity of Making Natural Plants a Crime

Marijuana (Cannabis)

Imagine a world where picking a leaf from a tree, brewing bark into tea, or cultivating a plant in your own garden could land you in jail. A world where nature is no longer free, but forbidden – regulated, patented, or punished. As surreal as it sounds, this is the reality we live in. Across the earth, governments have criminalised the possession, use, or cultivation of certain natural plants, plants that have grown from the earth maybe for thousands of years and have been used by indigenous cultures as food, medicine, and sacrament.

But why? Who benefits? And more importantly, who suffers?

A Crime Against Nature

Criminalising a plant is, in essence, criminalising nature. These are not chemical concoctions whipped up in secret labs – they are creations of the Earth, untouched by human invention. From cannabis and kratom, to psilocybin mushrooms, coca leaves, kava, ayahuasca, and even certain traditional herbs – plants have been swept into legal frameworks that define them as dangerous, despite generations of safe and sacred use.

It begs the question: who gave anyone the authority to make nature illegal?

The Colonial and Racial Roots of Plant Prohibition

Many of the laws that criminalise natural plants can be traced back to colonial oppression and racialised control. Indigenous communities across Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania have long used plants for healing, spiritual ceremonies, and daily life. When colonial powers invaded these lands, they not only extracted resources – they also criminalised traditional knowledge and plant medicines, branding them as primitive, pagan, or dangerous.

Later, during the 20th century, the so-called “War on Drugs” became a cover for systemic racism and global political control. In the United States, for instance, cannabis was criminalised in part to target Black and Mexican communities. The coca leaf, used traditionally in the Andes for energy, altitude sickness, and ritual was demonised due to its association with cocaine, despite being a very different substance in its raw, whole form.

The Threat to Pharmaceutical and Corporate Interests

Let’s not overlook perhaps the most powerful motive: profit.

Natural plants cannot be patented. You can’t own the rights to a dandelion, a neem tree, or a stalk of burdock. If people can heal themselves with herbal teas, tonics, and wildcrafted remedies, they become less dependent on pharmaceutical drugs, insurance plans, or commercial supplements.

So what happens? The herbs are outlawed, or their therapeutic claims are restricted by regulatory agencies. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies isolate the plant’s active compound, synthesise it, patent it, and sell it at a premium, while the whole, natural plant remains criminalised or heavily restricted.

Case in point: the active compound in turmeric, curcumin, has been patented in various forms despite turmeric being used for centuries in Indian medicine. Willow bark, the original source of aspirin, was once a humble tea. Now its synthetic cousin is a multi-billion-dollar industry.

Silencing Indigenous Wisdom and Traditional Healers

When we criminalise plants, we’re not just attacking biology – we’re attacking culture.

For traditional healers, shamans, herbalists, and village elders, these plants are living allies, part of a sacred relationship with the natural world. The knowledge of how to use them is not only medicinal, but spiritual and ancestral. Criminalising their use marginalises centuries of wisdom, while elevating a medical system that often ignores root causes and sells treatment, not healing.

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The result is a double injustice: denying communities access to their own traditional medicine, and persecuting them if they dare to practice it.

Who Decides What Is “Dangerous”?

It’s worth asking: Who gets to decide what is dangerous? Why is it that alcohol and tobacco two substances responsible for millions of deaths are legal and widely advertised, while a leaf, root, or mushroom is banned?

Danger, in this case, is often not about harm but about power. A plant that opens the mind, purifies the body, or reconnects a person to nature is seen as a threat, not because it’s harmful, but because it’s liberating. It returns power to the individual. It breaks cycles of dependency. It heals.

That’s dangerous to those who profit from sickness.

Health Freedom Is a Human Right

The right to grow, use, and share plants should be a basic human right. This is not about promoting reckless use of psychoactive plants, it’s about reclaiming autonomy over our bodies and health. People should be empowered with knowledge, supported by community, and allowed access to natural medicine without fear of arrest or persecution.

Herbs are not the enemy. The enemy is the system that seeks to gatekeep health and disconnect us from nature.

Reclaiming What Was Never Theirs to Take

Around the world, a resurgence is happening. People are turning back to herbalism, foraging, ancestral medicine, and natural living. They are refusing to let governments or corporations dictate what grows in their gardens or what they put into their bodies.

From backyard herbalists to clinical practitioners, from indigenous medicine keepers to health freedom activists – there is a rising movement to decriminalise natural plants, defend traditional knowledge, and reclaim the sacred connection to the Earth.

Let’s not be fooled by the rhetoric of control. Let’s remember that we are part of nature, and nature cannot be criminal. The plants are not the problem. The problem is the arrogance of those who think they can own the Earth.

Final Thoughts

The audacity of making natural plants a crime lies not just in its absurdity, but in its harm. It robs people of their health, cultures of their traditions, and communities of their sovereignty. It creates a false dichotomy between “approved” medicine and “illegal” nature. It’s time to call it what it is: a violation of life itself.

The Earth is medicine. The plants are not criminals.
It’s time we stop treating them as such, and start defending them as sacred.

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References

  1. Colonial Legacy and Criminalization of Plants
    • Schultes, R. E., & Hofmann, A. (1992). Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers. Healing Arts Press.
    • Escohotado, A. (1999). A Brief History of Drugs: From the Stone Age to the Stoned Age. Park Street Press.
  2. Pharmaceutical Industry and Economic Motives
    • Russo, E. B. (2016). “Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research: The Current Landscape.” Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, 1(1), 1-3.
    • Herzberg, D. (2020). White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America. University of Chicago Press.
  3. Suppression of Indigenous Knowledge
    • Labate, B. C., & Cavnar, C. (Eds.). (2014). Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond. Oxford University Press.
    • Dobkin de Rios, M. (2009). The Psychedelic Journey of Marlene Dobkin de Rios: 45 Years with Shamans, Ayahuasqueros, and Ethnobotanists. Park Street Press.
  4. Health Freedom and Autonomy
    • Pollan, M. (2021). This Is Your Mind on Plants. Penguin Press.
    • Tupper, K. W., & Labate, B. C. (2015). “Ayahuasca, Psychedelic Studies, and Health Sciences: The Politics of Knowledge and Inquiry.” Current Drug Abuse Reviews, 7(3), 154-161.
  5. Global Pushback and Legal Reforms
    • Walsh, C. (2016). “Psychedelics and Cognitive Liberty: Reimagining Drug Policy Through the Prism of Human Rights.” International Journal of Drug Policy, 29, 80-87.
    • United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). (2023). World Drug Report 2023.
  6. Specific Plant Examples (Cannabis, Kratom, Psilocybin)
    • Hill, K. P. (2015). “Medical Marijuana for Treatment of Chronic Pain and Other Medical and Psychiatric Problems: A Clinical Review.” JAMA, 313(24), 2474-2483.
    • Prozialeck, W. C., Jivan, J. K., & Andurkar, S. V. (2012). “Pharmacology of Kratom: An Emerging Botanical Agent with Stimulant, Analgesic, and Opioid-Like Effects.” Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, 112(12), 792–799.
    • Carhart-Harris, R. L., & Goodwin, G. M. (2017). “The Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelic Drugs: Past, Present, and Future.” Neuropsychopharmacology, 42(11), 2105–2113.

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